Why I tried to Stop Comparing Myself to Others and Stealing My Own Joy

When you play the comparison game, you ALWAYS lose. I finally found out that I needed to quit the comparison game and stop stealing my own joy!

I looked at her, sitting there on the park bench. Her kids were well behaved, using their kind words, and she was engaged, oohing and ahhing over every stick or leaf they brought her. With her foot, she rocked her baby stroller back and forth. She had what looked like a homemade protein shake with her, and was wearing workout clothes, clearly having walked here, but looked completely put together with a full face of makeup.

Then I thought about how I must have looked… the yoga pants I had on yesterday, a bottle of juice from the fridge, messy bun, no makeup, checking my phone once in awhile as my son ran from slide to swing and back again. I was engaged for the first 5 or 6 really awesome leafs he brought me, and after that, resorted to nodding and saying “Oh, that’s nice, Ketchup! I love it…”

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5 Ways to Break Phone Addiction and Be a More Responsive Parent

Do you have a New Year's Resolution to stop staring at your phone so much? Or maybe you just want to break the cycle of cell phone addiction and see the world around you. This post has tips on 5 ways to help break phone addiction and help you interact with your kids more. | parenting | self care | self help | phone addiction | internet addiction |

I was checking my emails. The phone had just buzzed, and I switched from Instagram over to my Gmail to check an email from a work contact. It seemed innocent enough. And then I heard my son say “Mom. Look. Please look.” What started as a momentary distraction to post a cute photo of him turned into a much longer journey through posting the photo, crafting a perfect caption, adding hashtags, liking friends’ recent photos, and then switching over to read emails. It wasn’t intentional– I wasn’t trying to give up attention to focus on my phone. But I had unintentionally stopped watching my son’s craft project because I had stopped to post “just one photo” and gotten lost in my phone again.

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